At
the latest since the publication of Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home" in
2008, comics by women are the talk of the day. With her drawn memoirs
Bechdel landed a surprise success making it as far as the ‘New York
Times’ bestseller list. On a
trip through South America in the same year, the Dutch graphic artist
Anna Bas Backer had the idea for Chicks on Comics. Together with the
artist Powerpaola from Colombia ((Ed.)Ecuador) Anna founded the probably
first ever transatlantic illustration-group-blog. The name is a tribute
to the feministic cult-band Chicks on Speed. “Just that in our case
we’re addicted to comics”, says Anna. Today
eight artists hold a visual conversation on the blog: every drawing
refers to the previous one. One of Anna’s illustrations for example
shows a girl, who’s drawing means the world to her. Clara Lagos from
Buenos Aires answers with two knights that carry a pencil as “weapon
against boredom and sadness”. A great system where the only flaw seems
to be that the internet can’t produce a perfect replica of all original
colors. But the readers of the blog don’t seem to be bothered by that.
The chicks especially have a lot of fans in South America, where the
online-comic scene is somewhat ahead of the one in Germany. The chicks
are especially interested in being an example to younger women in a way
that they missed when they grew up. Also in the comic scene back then
women were few and far between. These days things look brighter – just
think of Katharina Greve. The Hamburg-born cartoonist recently received
the ICOM Preis for her comic “Ein Mann geht an die Decke”. In the over
100 episodes of her online-strip “The Tragedy of Things” (in Ulli Lust’s
‘screen comic publisher’ Electrocomics) she hands over the floor to
cupboards, ladles and other objects, that wouldn’t otherwise get a word
in edgewise. Since January a new strip appears weekly - a hot tip.

Suburbanimal

CHICKS ON COMICS HAVE STRIKED UP IN 'SILENT CONVERSATION' WITH EACH OTHER.

IN "SUBURBANIMAL" THE CHICKS ON COMICS ARTISTS WORK ROUGHLY 7 POSTS AHEAD OF THE ONES POSTED ON THE BLOG, PASSING THEIR PANELS TO EACH OTHER BY EMAIL. THIS WAY EACH PANEL IS CREATED AFTER PREVIEWING ONLY THE PREVIOUS ONE... KIND OF LIKE THAT GAME, "TELEPHONE". CLICK HERE TO READ FROM THE BEGINNING.